Pitch to SCOUTED

Pitches are now open

As we build towards a new era for this magazine, the editorial team at SCOUTED is looking to add a handful of new paid columnists to our regular rotation.

If you’re interested in writing for SCOUTED, there’s a Google Form at the bottom of this page. Please read this pitching guide carefully before you submit a form. We’ve spent more than a decade building our editorial voice and it is extremely dear to us; writers who ignore the information here will not be considered. Depending on the volume of responses, we also may not be able to get back to everyone - please forgive us!

Sorry for the serious bit. We’re excited! Let’s get started.

What we’re looking for

• We’re looking for a handful of regular columnists to publish features in the magazine on a general cadence of once every 4-6 weeks, depending on the length / depth of the story.
• We can currently pay £100 per story. Invoices will be paid on time, every time - within 7 days of receipt when possible, and never later than Net 30. We intend to scale freelance rates as and when we hit subscriber targets, as will be laid out in our coming subscription drive.
• We’re looking for pieces generally 1500-2000 words in length, although the right story can certainly go longer.
• SCOUTED’s editing process is involved, and only writers happy to work collaboratively with an editor should apply.
• Future SCOUTED print offerings will feature a selection of columnist’s work - if your writing appears in print, we’ll ensure you get a free copy.
• New or undiscovered writers are extremely encouraged to apply!

The kinds of writing we want:

• Beautifully written, well-validated and authoritative player discovery stories with a distinct human touch. Our primary mission has always been to help our readers discover football’s next generation. We want to profile the players a step or two away from starting in Europe’s biggest leagues - meaning they’ll likely be in mainstream headlines within a year - with excellently written stories that balance the player’s journey against on-pitch analysis. When a reader finally watches a player we’ve profiled a year from now, they should already have an instinctive sense of their style.

The Amazing Johan Manzambi

Kennet Eichhorn, the new-age carrier

Smitten!

• High-impact opinion & narrative pieces on the teams and systems defining the discourse. We want to find knowledgeable and thoughtful writers capable of telling surprising but well-reasoned stories on the future of football. Know why an attacking trend is so prominent? Why a certain young player is better than you think? Why a certain transfer is exactly what a big club is missing? We want to help you tell that story.

Riccardo Calafiori, aura redefined

The House of Glass & Iron

Why Arsenal should sign Ayyoub Bouaddi

Noni Madueke is set to explode

• Deeply explored and original ideas that reflect and shape the future of scouting and recruitment: both explaining and demystifying current trends and processes, and developing new and groundbreaking approaches in clear narrative style. Well-reasoned and defended narratives that walk us through how a new mode of thinking might shape the future of the game, where it came from, and how it’s developed. Work that translates the obtuse into story.

Mapping the Future of Midfield

Mind Games

• Well-sourced first-person narrative journalism on the characters and institutions shaping the future of the game. We want to take readers inside the minds of the people shaping the lives of young footballers and the destiny of their clubs with deep primary sources & interviews. (This is more involved work, and for the right story we can help with expenses).

They Always Run: Inside RB Leipzig

Modern Renaissance: Inside USG

We will not publish:

• Analysis or data without a strong narrative through-line, heart, or character. If it feels like it could be published in another analysis website, or on a personal blog, it is not for us.
• Reactive opinion that will pass from memory in a week.
• Negative opinion on young footballers without extremely tight and fair reasoning. This extends to speculation on personal life and character judgements. We will not feature players under the age of 16 unless there is an exceptional journalistic interest which, in most cases, means playing first-team senior football.
• News.

We like to imagine someone stumbling upon this work devoid of any SCOUTED branding, and being asked to guess which magazine produced it: would they know, instinctively and from the words alone, it was a SCOUTED story?

What SCOUTED can do for you:

SCOUTED was founded with the ideal of platforming a core team of young writing talent as they looked to break into the industry. Although the founders are, tragically, no longer young, we'd like to return to offering support for the next generation.

If you're a young / early-career writer applying, we promise you the following:

• We'll use our network to help you find strong primary sources where they'd add authority to your story.
• We'll help you build a bloody good portfolio: you can freely publish SCOUTED work on your personal blog or website (with a few minor restrictions we'll discuss). SCOUTED is a byline that means something, with real institutional and professional credibility, and our alumni are everywhere across European football and the media.
• Our collaborative editing process treats prose as seriously as analysis or argument. We think this is a rare, valuable form of editorial mentorship for new or young writers, and we wish something similar had been more available when we were starting out.
• We'll put your absolute best work in front of an audience of 15,000+ readers, including professional journalists, scouts and executives, and we'll pay you real money.
• Many past writers have used SCOUTED as a reference to support academic and professional applications - the editor is always happy to do so.
• We'll offer as much support, advice or mentorship as we possibly can.
• We'll get you in print!

A note on editing

SCOUTED's editing process for features is quite involved, and is probably closer to that of a culture or literary magazine than a traditional football website. We're looking for writers happy to shape their work alongside the editing team until it fits SCOUTED's voice and tone; we think of each story as a collaborative act.

We'll provide a short Editorial Bible to all new writers, which will make the workflow from pitch to publishing as clear as possible and guide us towards crafting the best story possible. If you're against being edited beyond typos or grammar fixes, please do not apply.

A note on data integrity and AI

Right now, we're more interested in expanding our network of traditional journalists and writers than necessarily finding new data-first analysts (we're quite well stocked in that department).

Of course, modern football writing is rarely complete without some data validation, but we're largely looking for work that uses it in a supporting role, rather than taking the lead.

All data usage will be fact and logic checked by one of SCOUTED’s existing data editors, and the team might add data context where it strengthens an argument or conclusion.

• We cannot currently offer access to any tools outside of those already publicly available, although we are working to change that.
• Data should be deeply interrogated; wherever a conclusion is reached, working should be shown.
• We value original thought process and usage highly among those who use data prominently; the data team here can offer some guidance and thoughts where appropriate.
• All sources must be clearly stated and linked.

Analysis writers are strongly encouraged to become familiar with the work of our current Data Editor, Jake Entwistle.

(Please note SkillCorner data is not available for freelancers to access).

AI Policy

• Because it's 2026, we feel compelled to say SCOUTED will not publish any text generated by LLM.
• We appreciate many are experimenting with LLM's in their research workflows and that's fine, as long as due diligence is performed to fact-check outputs and catch hallucinations.
• Any LLM-generated articles, or those including LLM-generated text of any kind, will be rejected out-of-hand. We will be checking.

Get in touch!

Thanks for reading! We’re really looking forward to discovering some new voices and collaborators.

If nothing here has put you off, the application form is below. It should take no more than ten minutes.

Speak soon,

Tom + SCOUTED